Der Stürmer
Encyclopedia
Der Stürmer was a weekly tabloid-format Nazi
newspaper
published by Julius Streicher
from 1923 to the end of World War II
in 1945, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of the Nazi propaganda
machinery and was vehemently anti-Semitic
. Unlike the Völkischer Beobachter
(translatable as The People's Observer), the official party paper which gave itself an outwardly serious appearance, the tabloid-style Der Stürmer often ran obscene and tasteless materials such as anti-Semitic caricature
s and propaganda-like accusations of blood libel, pornography
, anti-Catholic, anti-capitalist
and anti-"reactionary"
propaganda too.
The paper originated at Nuremberg
during Hitler’s attempt to establish power and control. During the struggle to achieve power, Streicher was accused by the opposition of the Nazi party as being “a liar, a coward, of having unsavory friends, mistreating his wife and of flirting with women”. Despite the accusations, the first copy of Der Stürmer was published April 20, 1923. Der Stürmer’s circulation grew over time, distributing to a large percentage of the German population as well as Argentina
, Brazil
, Canada
and the United States
.
Between August 1941 and September 1944, Streicher authorized articles demanding the annihilation and extermination of the Jewish race.
, known as Fips, who was one of the best-known anti-Semitic cartoonists, his virulent attacks wedding "Jewish capitalists
" with "Jewish Communism
" etc.
At the bottom of the title page there was always the motto "Die Juden sind unser Unglück!" ("The Jews are our misfortune!"), coined by Heinrich von Treitschke
in the 1880s. In the nameplate was the motto "Deutsches Wochenblatt zum Kampfe um die Wahrheit" ("German Weekly Newspaper in the Fight for Truth").
. In 1927, it sold about 27,000 copies every week; by 1935, its circulation had reached around 480,000.
Hermann Göring
forbade Der Stürmer in all of his departments, and Baldur von Schirach
banned it as a means of education in the Hitlerjugend (HJ)
's hostels and other HJ-education facilities by a "Reichsbefehl" ("Reich command"). (IMT vol. XIII/XIV).
However, other senior Nazi officials, including Heinrich Himmler
(head of the SS), Robert Ley
(leader of the DAF
), and Max Amann
(proprietor of the Zentral Verlag (Central Press), comprising 80 percent of the German press in 1942), endorsed the publication, and their statements were often published in Der Stürmer. Albert Forster
, Gauleiter of Danzig (now Gdańsk
), wrote in 1937:
Hitler considered Streicher's "primitive methods" to be effective in influencing "the man on the street." Hermann Rauschning
, who claimed to be Hitler's confidant, said in the mid-1930s:
During the war, the paper's circulation dropped because of paper shortages, as well as Streicher's exile from Nuremberg for corruption. More ominously, perhaps, the Jews, its main target, had begun to disappear
from everyday life, which diminished the paper's relevance. Hitler, however, insisted that Streicher receive sufficient support to continue publishing Der Stürmer.
After the war, Streicher was tried at the Nuremberg trials
. His publishing and speaking activities were a major part of the evidence presented against him. In essence, the prosecutors took the line that Streicher's role in inciting Germans to exterminate Jews made him an accessory
to murder, and thus no different from those who actually carried out the killings. Streicher was found guilty and hanged.
, "a major challenge of political anti-Semitism involves overcoming the images of the 'Jew next door' — the living, breathing acquaintance or associate whose simple existence appears to deny the validity of that negative stereotype." Der Stürmers lurid content appealed to a large spectrum of readers who were lower class and less-sophisticated. Der Stürmer was known for its use of simple themes that took little thought. Streicher attacks the Jews in three categories:
were staples of Der Stürmer but many were creations of Streicher’s imagination, derived from little fact, or random occurrences. Streicher described Jews as sex offenders who were “violators of the innocent”, “perpetrators of bizarre sex crimes”, and “ritual murderers” performed in religious ceremonies using blood of other humans, usually Christians. Streicher also frequently reported attempts of child molestation by Jews. Der Stürmer never lacked details about sex, names, and crimes in order to keep readers aroused and entertained. These accusations, articles and crimes printed in Der Stürmer were often inaccurate and rarely investigated by staff members.
In the newspaper's opinion, if a German girl became pregnant by a Jew, the Jew would deny paternity, offer to pay for abortion, fail to pay child support, or simply leave for the U.S. Within Der Stürmer it was not uncommon to hear reports of German women killing their children because they did not want to bring a “Jewish bastard into the world”.
the Jews hatred for Christianity
was concealed only for one reason: Business." Jewish businessmen were often portrayed as doing almost anything to obtain financial wealth which included, in his words, “become a usurer, a traitor, a murderer”. In the summer of 1931, Streicher focused much of the paper's attention on a Jewish owned butchery. One philanthropic merchant operated a soup kitchen; Der Stürmer ran articles accusing the business of poisoning the food served. Der Stürmer criticized and twisted every single price increase and decrease in Jewish shops, as well as their charitable donations as a further form of financial greed. This attack on Jewish philanthropy received the most public criticism out of all of Der Stürmer’s anti-Semitic propaganda.
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
published by Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine...
from 1923 to the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in 1945, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of the Nazi propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
machinery and was vehemently anti-Semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
. Unlike the Völkischer Beobachter
Völkischer Beobachter
The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...
(translatable as The People's Observer), the official party paper which gave itself an outwardly serious appearance, the tabloid-style Der Stürmer often ran obscene and tasteless materials such as anti-Semitic caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
s and propaganda-like accusations of blood libel, pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, anti-Catholic, anti-capitalist
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
and anti-"reactionary"
Monarchism
Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy as a form of government in a nation. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government out of principle, independent from the person, the Monarch.In this system, the Monarch may be the...
propaganda too.
The paper originated at Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
during Hitler’s attempt to establish power and control. During the struggle to achieve power, Streicher was accused by the opposition of the Nazi party as being “a liar, a coward, of having unsavory friends, mistreating his wife and of flirting with women”. Despite the accusations, the first copy of Der Stürmer was published April 20, 1923. Der Stürmer’s circulation grew over time, distributing to a large percentage of the German population as well as Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Between August 1941 and September 1944, Streicher authorized articles demanding the annihilation and extermination of the Jewish race.
Racist caricatures
Der Stürmer was best-known for its effective antisemitic caricatures, which depicted Jews as ugly characters with exaggerated facial features and misshapen bodies. In his propaganda work, Streicher furthered old myths from the Middle Ages, e.g., that Jews killed children, sacrificed them and drank their blood. Many of these drawing were the work of Philipp RupprechtPhilipp Rupprecht
Philipp Rupprecht was a German cartoonist best known for his antisemitic caricatures in the Nazi publication Der Stürmer, under the pen-name Fips.-Career:...
, known as Fips, who was one of the best-known anti-Semitic cartoonists, his virulent attacks wedding "Jewish capitalists
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
" with "Jewish Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
" etc.
At the bottom of the title page there was always the motto "Die Juden sind unser Unglück!" ("The Jews are our misfortune!"), coined by Heinrich von Treitschke
Heinrich von Treitschke
Heinrich Gotthard von Treitschke was a nationalist German historian and political writer during the time of the German Empire.-Early life and teaching career:...
in the 1880s. In the nameplate was the motto "Deutsches Wochenblatt zum Kampfe um die Wahrheit" ("German Weekly Newspaper in the Fight for Truth").
Circulation
Most of its readers were young people and people from the lowest strata of German society. Copies of Der Stürmer were displayed in prominent display cases throughout the ReichNazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. In 1927, it sold about 27,000 copies every week; by 1935, its circulation had reached around 480,000.
Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
forbade Der Stürmer in all of his departments, and Baldur von Schirach
Baldur von Schirach
Baldur Benedikt von Schirach was a Nazi youth leader later convicted of being a war criminal. Schirach was the head of the Hitler-Jugend and Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Vienna....
banned it as a means of education in the Hitlerjugend (HJ)
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
's hostels and other HJ-education facilities by a "Reichsbefehl" ("Reich command"). (IMT vol. XIII/XIV).
However, other senior Nazi officials, including Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
(head of the SS), Robert Ley
Robert Ley
Robert Ley was a Nazi politician and head of the German Labour Front from 1933 to 1945. He committed suicide while awaiting trial for war crimes.- Early life :...
(leader of the DAF
German Labour Front
The German Labour Front was the National Socialist trade union organisation which replaced the various trade unions of the Weimar Republic after Adolf Hitler's rise to power....
), and Max Amann
Max Amann
Max Aman was a German Nazi official with the honorary rank of SS-Obergruppenführer, politician and journalist.-Biography:Amann was born in Munich on November 24, 1891...
(proprietor of the Zentral Verlag (Central Press), comprising 80 percent of the German press in 1942), endorsed the publication, and their statements were often published in Der Stürmer. Albert Forster
Albert Forster
Albert Maria Forster was a Nazi German politician. Under his administration as the Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia during the Second World War, the local non-German population suffered ethnic cleansing, mass murder, and forceful Germanisation...
, Gauleiter of Danzig (now Gdańsk
Gdansk
Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...
), wrote in 1937:
"With pleasure I say that the Stürmer, more than any other daily or weekly newspaper, has made clear to the people in simple ways the danger of Jewry. Without Julius Streicher and his Stürmer, the importance of a solution to the Jewish question would not be seen to be as critical as it actually is by many citizens. It is therefore to be hoped that those who want to learn unvarnished truth about the Jewish question will read the Stürmer."
Hitler considered Streicher's "primitive methods" to be effective in influencing "the man on the street." Hermann Rauschning
Hermann Rauschning
Hermann Rauschning was a GermanConservative Revolutionary who briefly joined the Nazis before breaking with them. In 1934 he renounced Nazi party membership and defected to the United States where he denounced Nazism...
, who claimed to be Hitler's confidant, said in the mid-1930s:
"Anti-Semitism … was beyond question the most important weapon in [Hitler's] propagandist arsenal, and almost everywhere it was of deadly efficiency. That was why he had allowed Streicher, for example, a free hand. The man’s stuff, too, was amusing, and very cleverly done. Wherever, he wondered, did Streicher get his constant supply of new material? He, Hitler, was simply on thorns to see each new issue of the Stürmer. It was the one periodical that he always read with pleasure, from the first page to the last".
During the war, the paper's circulation dropped because of paper shortages, as well as Streicher's exile from Nuremberg for corruption. More ominously, perhaps, the Jews, its main target, had begun to disappear
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
from everyday life, which diminished the paper's relevance. Hitler, however, insisted that Streicher receive sufficient support to continue publishing Der Stürmer.
After the war, Streicher was tried at the Nuremberg trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
. His publishing and speaking activities were a major part of the evidence presented against him. In essence, the prosecutors took the line that Streicher's role in inciting Germans to exterminate Jews made him an accessory
Accessory (legal term)
An accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal...
to murder, and thus no different from those who actually carried out the killings. Streicher was found guilty and hanged.
Anti-Semitic content
According to Dennis ShowalterDennis Showalter
Dennis E. Showalter is a professor of history at Colorado College who specializes in German military history. He was president of the American Society for Military History from 1997 to 2001. In addition, Showalter is an advising fellow of the Barsanti Military History Center at the University of...
, "a major challenge of political anti-Semitism involves overcoming the images of the 'Jew next door' — the living, breathing acquaintance or associate whose simple existence appears to deny the validity of that negative stereotype." Der Stürmers lurid content appealed to a large spectrum of readers who were lower class and less-sophisticated. Der Stürmer was known for its use of simple themes that took little thought. Streicher attacks the Jews in three categories:
Sexual crimes
Stories of Jewish men and German women having sexRassenschande
Rassenschande or Blutschande was the Nazi term for sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans, which was punishable by law...
were staples of Der Stürmer but many were creations of Streicher’s imagination, derived from little fact, or random occurrences. Streicher described Jews as sex offenders who were “violators of the innocent”, “perpetrators of bizarre sex crimes”, and “ritual murderers” performed in religious ceremonies using blood of other humans, usually Christians. Streicher also frequently reported attempts of child molestation by Jews. Der Stürmer never lacked details about sex, names, and crimes in order to keep readers aroused and entertained. These accusations, articles and crimes printed in Der Stürmer were often inaccurate and rarely investigated by staff members.
In the newspaper's opinion, if a German girl became pregnant by a Jew, the Jew would deny paternity, offer to pay for abortion, fail to pay child support, or simply leave for the U.S. Within Der Stürmer it was not uncommon to hear reports of German women killing their children because they did not want to bring a “Jewish bastard into the world”.
Business life
"For Julius StreicherJulius Streicher
Julius Streicher was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine...
the Jews hatred for Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
was concealed only for one reason: Business." Jewish businessmen were often portrayed as doing almost anything to obtain financial wealth which included, in his words, “become a usurer, a traitor, a murderer”. In the summer of 1931, Streicher focused much of the paper's attention on a Jewish owned butchery. One philanthropic merchant operated a soup kitchen; Der Stürmer ran articles accusing the business of poisoning the food served. Der Stürmer criticized and twisted every single price increase and decrease in Jewish shops, as well as their charitable donations as a further form of financial greed. This attack on Jewish philanthropy received the most public criticism out of all of Der Stürmer’s anti-Semitic propaganda.